Twenty Points

[BBQ&Beer]

Anyone else notice that the vast majority of our good plays today came with Newton under center?

Yup.

[Mr. Scot]

I've been making the same points Scot.

That's what is so frustrating with our team... It's disheartening, to say the least.

The offense is the problem. The defense, minus the Giants game, has been solid and with Luke and TD in there full-time, it has been completely stabilized, making us good enough to win on that side of the ball.

And to come on here and read people trashing Newton is just mind boggling to me. He has been the only reason this horrible offense has had ANY production. The RBs aren't getting legitimate chances to contribute thanks to horrible playcalls and limited legitimate touches. The WRs don't get much of a chance either b/c penalties and poor playcalling set us up on long downs early and we can't get ourselves out of it - often resulting in 3 and outs. To boot, Cam is still making incredible, gamebreaking type plays, we just can't hold the ball long enough to sustain it... And most of his plays are coming from the non-gimmicky bases (under center, no read option).

IMO, it shows that he has actually made progress, but the playcalling and lack of balance make it appear to the casual fan that he has regressed. It's really hard to see him and the rest of our playmakers be bogged down because of horrible coaching.

Newton has legitimately played badly at times. Overall, he still has yet to show that he can be a clutch QB. Though yesterday he'd have had a much better chance to show it if not for a couple of absolutely horrible non-calls by the refs (again, happens every time we play the Cowboys).

Bottom line regarding Newton. Sometimes he looks incredible. Sometimes he looks incredibly awful. Consistency is what evades him. And I don't think anyone can look at him objectively and not say there are things he simply must improve.

Is he the sole problem though? Not even close.

A base scheme that really needs to be scrapped, an offensive line that was already bad now worse (although moving Bell inside was the right call), a receiving corps that never seems to have more than one guy who can produce at a time, a pair of runningbacks with a ridiculous ratio of salary to use...sure there's more but those are the things that come off the top of my head.

All of which brings up this: One of the big fallacies that gets thrown around here a lot is trying to nail down 'THE problem'. Fanthink always wants to find a single scapegoat. Maybe that's easier to cope with, but it's out of touch with reality. A lot of the mistaken ideas that get posted here come out of that flawed mindset, the one that has to find a single scapegoat and absolve everybody else.

If all our issues could be traced to a single source, that'd be great. We can only wish it were that easy.